The Invisible Gorilla and the Lake Woebegon Effect

On Lake Wobegon “all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking and all the children are above average” says the great American satirist Garrison Keillor in his “Prairie Home Companion” world.

But doesn’t that also describe all the too-greedy-to-fail fatheads running Wall Street? And, unfortunately, Main Street America’s 95 million irrational and self-sabotaging investors?

Yes, all of us! We’re Americans. Don’t confuse us with the facts, with reality. We’re the greatest in history, a legend in our own minds. And a rapidly mutating virus is spreading this lethal pandemic far beyond the shores of Lake Wobegon. Yes, folks, the “Lake Wobegon Effect” is hard-wired in America’s brain, an illusion of superiority, a smug arrogance where each knows we are the best, the chosen ones.

Warning: The Lake Wobegon Effect is the single best summary of today’s stock market psychology, high-frequency trading, behavioral economics theories and the new science of irrationality … and it’s sucking the life out of America’s soul.

The author, writing for Marketwatch, concludes that we smugly think we’re smarter than average while the invisible gorilla called Wall Street robs us blind. And commits massively criminal acts.

A new must-read article in the August issue of Bloomberg Markets smashes open the world of shadow banking between large banks in the United States and their role in the funding of Mexican drug operations.

Yet there have been no criminal prosecutions. None. So far the banks have gotten slaps on the wrist, nothing more.